Overview
The Senior Data Architect is responsible for designing, governing, and evolving the enterprise data platform, bridging business strategy, platform engineering, and data architecture to support the organization's digital transformation.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and articulate the long-term data architecture vision.
- Design comprehensive enterprise data architecture leveraging a medallion architecture.
- Establish architectural standards, principles, and patterns for data ingestion, processing, storage, access controls, and quality management.
- Design IFRC’s overall data architecture, architect data mesh patterns where appropriate.
- Evaluate and recommend technology investments, infrastructure choices, and platform capabilities.
- Develop a strategic data platform roadmap.
- Design scalable multi-region, multi-tenant platform architecture.
- Conduct regular architecture reviews and optimization.
- Lead, mentor, and develop the Data Platform DevOps Engineer and full-stack data engineering and report development team.
- Establish clear role definitions, responsibilities, and expectations for team members.
- Provide technical leadership through data model and code reviews, architecture assessments, and knowledge sharing sessions.
- Create structured mentoring programs.
- Conduct technical interviews and participate in hiring.
- Foster a collaborative culture.
- Balance hands-on technical work with leadership responsibilities.
- Support the team with clear boundaries, autonomy, and creative problem-solving.
- Lead end-to-end system design for complex data solutions across Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Azure platform components.
- Make critical technology selection decisions.
- Design role-based access control (RBAC), data security models, and governance frameworks.
- Architect data quality frameworks, testing standards, and metadata management approaches.
- Guide implementation of complex data integration patterns.
- Oversee system integration and ensure seamless communication between platform components.
- Establish patterns for scalability, performance optimization, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
- Support development and implementation of organizational data governance framework.
- Work with data governance and compliance teams to establish architectural guardrails.
- Create comprehensive documentation standards.
- Define and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for data platform quality, reliability, performance, and cost.
- Establish change management and governance processes.
- Oversee design and implementation of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and deployment strategies for Microsoft Fabric.
- Ensure platform engineering best practices are implemented.
- Guide the DevOps engineer in establishing platform maintenance procedures, capacity planning, and operational excellence.
- Review and optimize platform infrastructure design, cost efficiency, and resource utilization strategies.
- Ensure disaster recovery and business continuity strategies are designed, tested, and maintained.
- Develop and maintain stakeholder communication strategy.
- Create tailored architectural views for different stakeholder groups.
- Present architectural recommendations and technical strategies to executive leadership.
- Facilitate cross-functional collaboration.
- Serve as the technical authority on data architecture.
- Establish clear communication cadences and channels.
- Build and maintain partnerships with cloud providers, vendors, and technology partners.
- Contribute to overall organizational data strategy.
- Define organizational capability building needs.
- Regularly reassess strategy.
- Monitor emerging technologies and industry trends.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement.
- Establish knowledge management practices.
- Lead data architecture work and define data architecture and data modelling standards across the organization.
- Work actively towards the achievement of IFRC’s goals.
- Abide by and work in accordance with the Red Cross and Red Crescent principles.
- Perform any other work-related duties and responsibilities that may be assigned by the line manager.
Required Experience
- 10+ years of experience in data architecture, data engineering, or enterprise architecture roles.
- 5+ years of experience leading technical teams, managing engineers, and driving architectural decisions in enterprise environments.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience with modern cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP).
- 3+ years of experience with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Fabric or related Microsoft data solutions.
- Proven track record designing and implementing enterprise-scale data architectures supporting complex, mission-critical operations.
- Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into scalable, secure technical solutions.
- Understanding of CI/CD practices, Azure DevOps repos and pipelines, Microsoft Entra service principals, and IaC infrastructure automation.
- Experience with data quality frameworks, testing standards, and metadata management.
- Proficiency in designing scalable ETL/ELT architectures and data pipeline orchestration strategies.
- Experience developing data pipelines in PySpark and SQL.
- Experience with report development (Power BI or Tableau or similar products).
- Proven track record in building, leading and coaching high-performing technical teams with diverse skill sets.
Qualifications
- Required Degree in computer science, information technology, data science, or related field.
- Preferred Certifications for Microsoft Azure (Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Administrator, Azure Data Engineer).
- Certifications for Microsoft Fabric and Power BI.
